Category: HF

Radio amateurs in India now have access to three new bands. India’s Ministry of Communications’ Department of Telecommunications has published an updated National Frequency Allocation Plan, effective October 25, which lists the new bands at 5 MHz (60 meters), 472 kHz (630 meters), and 136 kHz (2300 meters). All allocations are on a secondary basis. On […]

Amateur Radio operators associated with the Maritime Mobile Service Network (MMSN) played a significant part in summoning medical assistance on November 9 for a crew member suffering chest pains on board the 48-foot sailing vessel Marie Elena, some 300 miles east of Bermuda. “The assistance we received from the ham radio operator[s] was crucial in helping […]

The SJ9WL-LG5LG Morokulien memorial station on the border of Sweden and Norway is off the air after a large tree, brought down during a severe storm on August 10, caused extensive damage to the station’s antennas. According to one report, the station’s 100-foot tower was broken into pieces after the tree fell across three tower guys. That pulled […]

According to the Association of Radio Amateurs of Slovenia (ZRS), radio amateurs in Slovenia now have a 60-meter band available to them as of July 14. The allocation is 5.351.5 – 5.366.5 MHz, with a maximum EIRP of 15 W, in accordance with the Final Acts of World Radiocommunication Conference 2015, with operation on a […]

Sweden’s World Heritage Grimeton Radio Station SAQ Alexanderson alternator will be on the air on July 1 on 17.2 kHz for its annual Alexanderson Day transmission. Three transmissions are scheduled: Startup/tuning at 0815 UTC, message transmission at 0845 UTC; startup/tuning at 1015 UTC, message transmission at 1045 UTC, and startup/tuning at 1215 UTC, message transmission at 1245 UTC. All […]

Experimental operations now under way on HF appear aimed at leveraging low-latency HF propagation to shave microseconds from futures market trades and gain a competitive edge in a field where millionths of a second can mean winning or losing. Bloomberg on June 18 reported on a secretive antenna facility near Maple Park, in Kane County, Illinois, and speculated that […]

A 100 kW HF broadcast transmitter in Nauen, Germany, will send Field Day greetings to North American radio amateurs in MFSK64 mode during the weekly “Giant Jukebox” broadcast of The Mighty KBC on 9,925 kHz, June 24, 0000 – 0200 UTC. The MFSK64, centered on 1,500 Hz, will begin at about 0130 UTC. An RSID will be […]

While 10 meters has not been the hottest band in the Amateur Radio toolkit of late, Iran apparently has found it an ideal spot to operate various radars. The interference was audible in International Amateur Radio Union Region 1 (IARU R1) and perhaps elsewhere in the world. “Iranian radars were very active on our 10-meter […]

If you are a radio enthusiast of A Certain Age, you may well go misty-eyed from time to time with memories of shortwave listening in decades past. Countries across the world operated their own propaganda radio stations, and you could hear Radio Moscow’s take on world events, the BBC World Service responding, and Radio Tirana […]

Despite largely dismal HF conditions, there is no doubt that the recent FT8 digital protocol has made hams more enthusiastic about getting on the air. The mode has caught on so quickly that co-developer Joe Taylor expressed surprise last fall at the rapid uptake of FT8 for making contacts on HF bands. Judging by Logbook […]

The second public test of FT8 DXpedition Mode has shown that the mock DXpedition stations (“Foxes”) were able to work the pileups of callers (“Hounds”) at a fairly good clip. Logged data showed that 390 unique stations were copied by one or more of the three Foxes. FT8 is part of the WSJT-X digital software suite. Ned […]

Alaska’s super-power High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitters in Gakona, Alaska, will fire up again for the spring research campaign April 6 – 14. University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Space Physics Group researcher and HAARP Chief Scientist Chris Fallen, KL3WX, told ARRL that more than 40 hours of “externally funded” experiments are in the […]

Martin Walter, V51W, near Omaruru, Namibia, has spent the past 2 decades improving his station, which likely accounts for his V55V station’s increasingly better signal. After trying all possible antenna systems, he is convinced that his wire rhombic antennas are the best choice. He uses three of them; two that are 160 meters on each leg to […]

Amateur radio is an extremely broad church when it comes to the numerous different activities that it covers. Most of the stories featuring radio amateurs that we cover here have involved home-made radios, but that represents a surprisingly small subset of licence holders. One activity that captivates many operators is grid square collecting. The map […]

Sweden’s Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) is considering lowering the transmitter output power for general Amateur Radio stations to 200 W PEP. Under a set of wide-ranging proposed regulatory changes affecting many radio services, radio amateurs who want to run higher power would have to apply for a license and pay an annual fee of […]